Jane Campion, president of the main competition jury at the Cannes Film Festival this year and the first and only woman to win the Palme d’Or, spoke of the film industry’s “inherent sexism” during the press conference opening the festival this morning. She added, of course, that 20-percent of the films chosen for Cannes this year were made by women (although, as many others have pointed out, those numbers might not be true). But she wasn’t completely letting the festival off the hook. “But nevertheless it does feel very undemocratic and women do notice, you know,” Campion added. “Time and time again we don’t get our share of representation.” Sofia Coppola, along with the actresses Carole Bouquet, Leila Hatami, and Jeon Do-yeon join Campion on the main jury. Which means there are almost as many women on one jury as there are who directed films at Cannes this year. (more…)

It’s being reported that Swiss artist H.R. Giger, famous for his sinewy designs used in Ridley Scott’s landmark sci-fi film “Alien,” for which he won an Academy Award, passed away on Monday from injuries he obtained after suffering a fall at his home in Zurich. He was 74 years old. The news was confirmed by the H.R. Giger Museum, a converted château in Gruyères, Switzerland, that that artist purchased in 1998.

In just a few days, a small stretch of West 77 street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive in Manhattan will be renamed Miles Davis Way. The bill was signed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg in what might prove to be the only good thing he did during his time in office. The jazz trumpeter, who died in 1991, lived in an expensive brownstone on the block for over 25 years, where he reportedly enjoyed hanging out on the stoop and greeting neighbors and passerby. The spot also marks a nice halfway spot between the landmarks of Davis’s early career — the legendary jazz clubs on 52 street and the Harlem jazz sessions hosted at Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s. (more…)

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything from or about Sergei Filin, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, since his recovery from an acid attack in January 2013. After an investigation, it was discovered that the man behind the attack was a dancer in the company, reportedly scorned over his girlfriend, another dancer in the company, not getting the lead role in one of the Bolshoi’s productions.

RZA, sage figurehead of the Wu-Tang Clan, is nothing if not ambitious. In addition to being the glue that keeps the often-feuding members together (even if the music has been on an increasingly mediocre slope for over a decade), he scores, directs, and acts in films, writes books, and keeps an absurd number of aliases. And if everything goes according to plan, soon you’ll be thinking of him and the rest of the group as artists.

Now that the mystery behind the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 is seemingly closer to reaching its tragic conclusion (and no, it wasn’t a black hole), what is the next step? Do we support the families who’ve lost loved ones? Do we investigate how this happened, and what could have been done to prevent it? Do we examine our own tabloid-crazy obsession with the entire thing, and look at how it might have made the situation worse?

This just in! Breaking news! According to an Associated Press report, film critics aren’t the least important people on earth. The Nielson annual American Moviegoing report, which is something that apparently exists and seems like a totally valid gauge of public opnion, “revealed that 80 percent of moviegoers refer to movie reviews at least some of the time when deciding what to see.” That’s enough for me. “About equally reliable to moviegoers are movie trailers, which 44 percent of those polled said they trust as a source of information on a film.” Oh boy. I guess I knew there had to be a downside to this.

Toward the beginning of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Charles Marlow, the sailor at the center of the novel’s journey, comments on the fading light of civilization. “It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery — a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over,” the character remarks. “It had become a place of darkness.”

Another one down. According to a report in the New York Times, The San Diego Opera, once one of the most famous companies on the West Coast, will close at the end of their season in April due to “an insurmountable financial hurdle.” The decision was made on Wednesday to end their run “with dignity and grace” rather than “inevitably entering bankruptcy,” an obvious reference to the closing of the New York City Opera last year.